We didn’t hear from Leslie for years. We had no clue where he’d gone and no way of finding out. Like he’d gone poof.
I made some inquiries, only to learn he wasn’t collecting his disability pay. The VA had no leads. I figured he might be dead, just lying somewhere, like the corpses we’d left behind in ’Nam. I couldn’t even broach the subject with Martha. She went to church every day, she sang and prayed like her prayers could bring back her boy.
I think it might have been at that moment that I forgot how to believe in Him. My faith in God had stood me in good stead for so long: when I was young, then when I was in the war, and even when I was trying to keep our streets nice and safe. I just stopped thinking about Him one day. God had gone quiet.
I kept going to Sunday services so as not to upset Martha even more, but my thoughts took me far off, past those walls, those songs, those bodies rocking back and forth. So as not to forget my own son, I got to volunteering every hour I could with the VA, for those banged-up men from the Gulf War and all the ongoing conflicts. There were new technologies that were supposed to be zero loss, or just about. The Department of Defense boasted about how nowadays they’d only lose a few soldiers, how nice that looked by comparison to both world wars! As if saying that helped any. Every single soldier had a family, there’s no filling the hole in their lives. But not a soul was giving that any thought, not even the president himself in his Oval Office.
It was while I was going to help some poor fellow from Virginia who’d lost both legs in Afghanistan but had to prove it that I came across an old colleague, Saunders. I hadn’t looked for my son in ages, but there he was again. Saunders said he’d been out at Hunts Point investigating a prostitution ring, and he’d seen Leslie there. But Leslie’d up and changed his name, or more likely his line of work called for a new one. He was going by Magic because he was selling dreams, smoke and mirrors, drugs in every shape and form. He’d been settling some scores and that was what got him put away. Walking through the police station, Saunders had seen that pretty face and recognized it straightaway from the photo in my office. It was like he hadn’t aged a day. And then he was out on bail the very same day, thanks to a lawyer from the nicer part of town. Apparently he had plenty of connections: he’d really made a name for himself.
I didn’t tell Martha a thing. The shame would have been the end of her. I let a whole year go by before I decided to pay a visit to New York. I lied to the woman I’d married: I told her I was going to a ’Nam vet reunion in New Jersey. It was long enough of a drive to think through every horror we’d been put through.
I couldn’t help but feel that it was no thanks to my luck that he’d come back just like a boomerang, only as broken on the inside as on the outside. I stayed under a fake name in one of those run-down hotels where the staff didn’t look too closely at the ID you gave them, and day after day I went up and down the streets around the police station, going a bit farther out each time. I pestered everyone I saw, asked more questions than I ought to have in this neighborhood, more questions than any old man ever ought to ask. I almost got killed a few times and maybe deep down that’s what I was hoping for, for my luck to finally run out. They could have offed me and folks both here and back home would have been none the wiser. I left the hotel phone number at every bodega and every bar I passed. Tell him to call me, it’s important. As if anything were really that important. I had an awfully good idea of what I might end up finding out, but I did it anyway, for Martha, who’d rocked her only son in her bosom and who couldn’t understand.
It took six days until I finally got a call. It wasn’t him but the voice of a boy pretending to be older than he was. He said Magic wanted to meet in Central Park the next night, at seven, and if I knew what was best for me I’d better knock it off with my questions. I knew it wasn’t wise, but I went. I reckoned maybe I could still bring my son back home. It might be that God’s hand was still with me after all, but all the same I took my gun with me, seeing as I had no way of knowing if the devil had taken His place.
Ages after the time he’d told me, just when I was getting ready to leave, Leslie turned up, and that shattered knee of his made his gait look almost casual. Somehow he’d made a dreamy thing of it. He was still a looker, but he must have developed a sweet tooth as he climbed up the ranks. His skin was grayish and his teeth were nothing like the smile he’d had as a teenager. Tattoos ran all the way up his neck to his jaw and there was no two ways about their meaning.
He kept his distance, his eyelids were heavy and low, he thrust up his chin like he was proud, and he asked what it was I wanted. What I wanted? I wanted to find my son, not some hotshot dealer. I called him by his Christian name and I told him that his mother was hoping he’d come home, that she hadn’t raised her one and only son to go around poisoning people.
He spat on the ground and said he had all the dough, blow, and hoes he wanted, that his brothers looked up to him, that Leslie was dead and buried, and that, unless I was going to buy a thing or two to take care of my arthritis, I could go and fuck off and the same went for my old lady.
I don’t know why I pulled out my gun. I don’t know why I took aim, why I shot at my son right there and then. I think it was my failings that I was thinking on, my own failings that I wanted to snuff out. I did it because I reckoned someone had to and it had to be me because no God-fearing soul should ask anyone else to bear a cross like that on their account.
I did my son in, I wasn’t able to protect him and keep him on the straight and narrow, and—owing to me, my own errors—he’d ended up poisoning other sons himself. I killed him and I don’t know what else I’d have done if she hadn’t turned up.